infinite credit to Mr Daly's judgment". The scenery and costumes cost Daly £1,200 and the Hibernian Journal praised "the unsparing Liberality of a Manager whose only Avarice seems to centre in promoting public Gratification". Development of relationship with Robert Jephson In February 1783 Daly staged the first performance of Robert Houlton's comic opera The Contract, and in May that year and in January 1784, respectively, he presented the premieres of Robert Jephson's The Hotel, or the Servant with Two Masters and The Campaign, or Love in the East Indies. Jephson, apart from being a playwright, was a Member of the Irish House of Commons, Comptroller of the Lord Lieutenant's Household, and Master of the Horse in Ireland, and as such was a useful conduit for Daly to the administration at Dublin Castle. In addition to practising as a doctor, Robert Houlton was a columnist for Francis Higgins, publisher of The Freeman's Journal. The Journal was the unofficial organ of the Dublin government, for which Higgins became chief spymaster. More musical success, and courting Charles Macklin In 1785 Daly commissioned the composer Charles Dibdin to provide him with musical scores and lured his old mentor Charles Macklin, then aged about eighty-six (but popularly believed to be much older), to play at Smock Alley by agreeing to pay him £50 per night. Such a rate was considerable by contemporary standards but the revenue a popular performer could generate may be judged from the death-bed confession to Daly by a ticket agent who, during the course of a brief engagement of Thomas King at Smock Alley, had succeeded with others in misappropriating £600 of Daly's ticket money. Macklin's residence at Smock Alley did not go entirely to plan. During a rehearsal of his play The Man of the World, he delivered such harsh criticism of Daly's performance as Egerton Macsycophant that Daly resigned the role in favour of William Macready the Elder, whose triumph in the part brought new momentum to his career. Widespread delight at Macklin's own performance (his first in Dublin for ten years) prompted the Dublin Evening Post to declare that Daly "is honoured with a much larger share of public favour and patronage than any other manager in this kingdom ever experienced and is justly entitled to that universal encouragement which has so distinguished his management". Dominance and grant of Royal patent The appeal and vitality of the offerings